There Will Be Blood

Last night I went to see "There Will Be Blood," the new Daniel Day-Lewis movie based on the book "Oil!" by Upton Sinclair. If you're planning on watching this later, be warned that there may be spoilers ahead.

Let me start off by saying that Daniel Day-Lewis is amazing. Just amazing. I don't know how better to articulate that. All through the movie I had this haunted feeling that he reminded me of someone, but I couldn't ever quite put a finger on who. Whoever it was, it definitely wasn't Daniel Day-Lewis. This movie is worth seeing just for him.

This movie is the story of a man who starts out as a gold miner, or possibly someone with the geological survey (I am not sure, though I know they say it), who ends up as an oil magnate in California. He goes into towns that have oil in the ground, sweet-talks everyone into selling or leasing their land to him, and makes boatloads of money. The conflict in the movie comes in when a teenage boy, Eli Sunday, demands money to start up his own "Church of the Third Revelation" from selling his land to the oilman. The oilman promises $5000, which he does not intend to pay. The boy and the man become enemies.

That's pretty much the story. It unfolds over 30 years, as you watch Daniel Plainview start out mining by himself underground, expanding to oil, adopting the baby of a miner killed at an oil well, becoming successful, and then having his life start to unravel when he moves to drill in the town where Eli Sunday lives.

The soundtrack was very interesting. Ominous notes - often just single, discordant notes - hover and buzz as characters go about their business. I don't know that I've ever seen a movie which uses a musical score to convey a sense of doom so effectively. Maybe not of doom, but foreboding. The people in the movie make big, dark decisions and those decisions are underscored perfectly by the score.

For the first several minutes of the movie, there is no dialogue. None. If I go see this again, I'd like to time how long it is before we hear anyone say a word, but it's got to be about 10 minutes. Which brings me to another point: this movie is long. It's long. Nothing is rushed. Conversations take their time. Character development takes it time. This is a long movie which seems even longer than it really is. But you're not sitting there bored, wishing it would end. That's just the pace of the story - the events in the movie set things in motion that take several years to develop, and the movie spools it out at a pace that conveys the scope of the story.

The overriding theme of the movie, to me, was this: Blood is thicker than water, but oil is thicker than blood. Daniel adopts the son of one of his dead workers to portray himself as a family man. However, when the boy is injured on an oil derrick and becomes deaf, Daniel rejects him and sends him away. Then, when he needs the boy in order to make a key business deal, he takes him in again.

The relationship between Daniel and the boy, H.W., is really quite complex. For much of the movie Daniel shows a lot of affection for the boy, but is then able to cast him away. One of the times in the movie when Daniel becomes the most angry and unhinged is when he perceives that someone else is trying to tell him how to raise H.W. As a boy, H.W. follows Daniel around everywhere, and Daniel actively teaches him all about the oil business and how to succeed - but only as a partner. Start your own business, and you become a competitor. Daniel can not abide competitors.

Midway through the movie, Daniel is surprised by the appearance of his half-brother. Previously unaware of his existence, Daniel accepts this man into his family, and he acts as a surrogate, usurping the place originally held by H.W. As with H.W., however, the half-brother soon finds out where Daniel stands when it comes to family vs. business.

One of the most striking parts of this movie, overall, is that there is no clear "good guy." Daniel is clearly the main character, but I stop short of calling him a protagonist because I'm not sure we are supposed to really like him in any way. His rival, Eli Sunday, is ruthless in his own way. Both characters display a shocking preponderance toward spite and revenge.

There is no heartwarming ending.

I know all of this is probably not adding up to a ringing endorsement for all of you, but I did like the movie. It makes you think. I don't know that it's very rewatchable - it makes you too uncomfortable for that - but I would like to see it again. All aspects of the movie are very well done.

Meat

Last night a bunch of us went out to dinner at Rodizio Grill. It was good. I've been to Brazilian steakhouses before, and to nyama choma places in Kenya, and they all have the same basic plan - some side dishes, and the never-ending stream of guys bringing you meat on huge skewers. You like lamb? We have lamb. You want beef? We have beef. Three kinds. You want chicken? No problem. Chicken hearts? Have three. (No thanks.) Sausage, spicy chicken, mahi mahi . . .

All until you beg them to stop. Flip your little table indicator to red and gasp for breath. And then eat one more fried banana for dessert before you die.

I love Rodizio Grill.

Weekend fun

This past weekend a bunch of us went bowling. It was a ridiculously long wait for a lane, but that made it so our last 1.5 games were cosmic bowling, so that wasn't so bad.

For the first game, Elliott and Austin both bowled left-handed (Austin actually alternated frames left and right, since he's ambidextrous) and they almost beat me. I'm so bad at bowling! I did break 100 in the second game, coming in last because everyone had switched back to right-handed, but in the third game . . . I won! I bowled a 136 and even got a spare and a strike on the 10th frame. Yay for me!

Saturday night was good times. Very good times.

Channel 5

This morning, eagle-eyed blog poster Sabrina spotted me on Studio 5 on KSL. Yay! Sometimes I wonder if anyone actually sees me on TV, since no one says anything. Do I only go on shows with no viewers?

Anyway, we didn't think we were going to make it on the air today because of all the President Hinckley coverage, but they ended up doing our spot anyway. I was there to talk about our Mating Dances class for Valentine's Day, which was an awkward topic transition, but I think we did all right. It was the TV debut for our new opossum, Vera, and she did very very well. The only problem was that I wore scented lotion so she was more interested in me than in looking at the camera.

Holly, our PR person was on the air with me. She used to work at KSL, so it's fun to go with her because she knows everyone. Radio and TV people are more gossipy than zoo people! You may know Holly from The Nightside Project on KSL radio, or from the morning show on KZHT. She worked for Simmons media for a while too, but I'm not sure what she did or with which station.

Yet another nerdy thing to do online

Test your geography IQ by playing the Traveler IQ Challenge on TravelPod. It rewards you for accuracy and speed, so click quick! I can get to level 10.

Jeopardy!

It's time once again to take the Jeopardy test online. I was not successful the last time I took it, but refuse to give up, particularly since my friend David is now able to introduce himself as "Two-Time Jeopardy! Champion."

The Central and Mountain time zones take the test the evening of January 30. You should try out, too!

Update

I said I was going to blog more this year, so I guess I'm due for another post here. If you're feeling that I'm not doing enough, you can always go to Clark's blog and read the comments. I'm pretty regular in there.

Anyway, January is our department's "off" season. Yes, one month is now a season. We define it that way because it's the only month in which we don't have a class offered to the public and are not training groups of new employees or volunteers.

BUT . . . January is volunteer recognition and our general meeting, which so far has eaten up all my time this month. And we added a Project Wild class next week. And our February classes start on the 9th, so we have to prepare for that. And we have to get our end-of-the-year reports done. And I'm behind on the podcasting project.

Welcome to our off-season.

Making Dad Proud

Jessica gave me the George Harrison double album "All Things Must Pass" for Christmas. I could tell, without even reading the liner notes, that it was produced by Phil Spector.

Pistol

I'd like to take a few moments to address a topic which, I am sure, was on all of your minds this past Saturday. The genius who was Pete Maravich.

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Pistol Pete died 20 years ago, and retired at some point before that (I'm no expert here), but all of you should go to YouTube right now and pull up some Maravich clips. That guy was amazing. He did things with a basketball which seem to be contrary to the laws of physics.

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Last night Elliott talked me into watching a movie about Pete Maravich - specifically, about his 8th grade year in high school. A lot of the movie was fictionalized, but they kid they got to star as Pete had really great ball-handling skills (and Confidence! A lot of the movie is about having Confidence!). In 8th grade, Pete Maravich was a 5 foot 2 kid starting on the varsity team. His dad, a former professional player, coached at Clemson so Pete would practice with the college team. Unbelievable. He'd play 10 hours a day. He dribbled while riding his bike, or out the door of the car while his dad drove. He spun the ball on his fingertip for an hour. Elliott, correct me on any of this if I'm wrong.

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He averaged 44 points a game in college! And this was before the 3-point line was created .

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And he had so much Confidence! ;)

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So anyway, RIP Pistol Pete. For what it's worth, I liked your movie more than Rocky IV and its inexplicable robot.

Socially responsible time-waster

If you have some time to kill, want to improve your vocabulary and feed the poor at the same time, check out http://www.freerice.com/. For every vocabulary word you get right, they donate 20 grains of rice.

I plateau at vocabulary level 47.

Happy New Year!

My resolution this year is to post more often. We shall see how that goes.

This year for New Year's Eve, I didn't have any plans until the last minute. Whew! Thanks to Elliott for having a birthday on the last day of the year, so I didn't have to sit home lonely. A bunch of us went to dinner at Tucci's for Elliott's birthday, and I had the pasta pomodoro. You have never seen such a large group of adults (or, "adults") coloring so industriously on the table covers with crayons. We made very pretty pictures, and at Elliott's request I kept tradition alive and did some Punnet squares. (Elliott x Elliott - he should not breed with himself because his children would be skinny string bean people who would blow over in the breeze. Or so finds my squares.)

After dinner I was invited along to Dan's house for some Rock Band goodness. Rock Band, for those of you who are unacquainted with the concept, is like Guitar Hero plus Sing Star plus Donkey Conga, only with a drum kit instead of bongos. You can also add a second guitar controller so someone can play bass. This kept all of us occupied until 2 in the morning when the PS3 pled for mercy and we turned it off.

I got home way late (I won't say when) to discover that my loving neighbor had decided to park sideways in the alley behind the house, so I had to go out the other end of the alley and parallel park on 8Th South. That's hard for me on a good day, but I think I did very well on my second try, particularly if you take the late hour and snowdrifts into consideration.

New Year's Day was fully devoted to napping, with a brief break to check out the winter sale at IKEA. I got a teapot. Woo!

So, what did you do for New Year's? Discuss.